this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
25 points (100.0% liked)
Linux
64338 readers
672 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Depends on how much RAM you intend to use, and how much you need. For normal web browsing, I think probably enough swap space to make your total RAM + Swap amount up to 24GiB should do. If you have more than that and don't run anything memory intensive, you can probably get away without any swap at all.
If you want the ability to hibernate though, you need at least the same amount of swap as physical RAM (since Linux will use the swap space as the location to "hibernate to".
I think for an SSD it makes sense to use a swap file rather than a swap partition, since random access is basically free and you can resize it easily. That's a minor thing though.
How much memory do you have? How much storage do you have? What will this computer be used for? Do you want to be able to hibernate?